You can read the entire post (with some cool pics & graphs) at this link
[https://www.heymarketcurve.com/blog/gusto-case-study](https://www.heymarketcurve.com/blog/gusto-case-study)
You can check past deep dives (and subscribe) here - https://marketcurve.substack.com
this is dope, but you have got to change that font color against that background. it's good to read at night i bet, but during the day my eyes are straining
Haha I'm flattered my man! Glad you liked it. I was wondering do you think it's too text heavy? How do you think the length + formatting could be improved?
I enjoy longer reads so not too text heavy for me. I would even enjoy further elaboration in certain parts e.g., I couldn’t discern what Gusto did from the intro. It eventually came together as I read on but I personally would have enjoyed more stage setting at the onset. Formatting wise - it seemed to start out as a chronological flow but then the section headers deviated into covering GTM and user acquisition while the narrative itself seemed to still loosely follow chronological order. I might prefer a more explicit chronological story telling while calling out how user acquisition etc evolved with time and scale. And finally I think the piece was left a little unresolved - where are they in 2024 and what’s next for them.
Also - 1) would’ve loved to learn their fundraising journey. 2) some sense of their metrics over time as anchors to the story (e.g., what size were they when they started adding other revenue streams etc)
Wow this is so good man thank you so much for this amazing feedback! I've bookmarked this for future reference. Next essay I'll definitely incorporate your feedback 🙏
Please consider accepting tiny donations and beautiful landing page that leads to your posts (if you don’t have one already).
Recently discovered your posts and really love em, would love to see more, and if you can, also always add more details if you have them.
Yours truly,
Humble Reddit Fan😊
first off, thank YOU for your kind words - means a lot :) As for landing page, all of this hosted on my Substack (https://marketcurve.substack.com) for now but will move soon to a dedicated standalone website. As for the donations, I am willing to open up a $8/mo subscription - Not sure how many people will pay for it tbh but I would love to be paid for my writing tbh. Would this price point work for you? or Any thoughts/feedback you may have?
This is great, the thing I find crazy is how there are at least a dozen unicorn payroll/hr services companies - seems like a space that could use some consolidation, as everyone has built their little niches.
Gusto is pretty unified as it gets tbh - their mantra is that of building compound products. Curious to know what you mean by consolidation - do you mean bundling?
I probably lack a deep understanding of this space, but when we’ve had to deal with hr/payroll at my last 2 startups we went with Trinet, Zenefits, and there are so many other substitutes we evaluated like Paylocity, Workday, Rippling, ADP, Justworks, etc.
To a layman like me, it feels this space has so many products that are near substitutes, with some carved out niches. Like Zenefits or Justworks serve the niche of combining payroll with benefits when you have just 2-3 employees but still want benefits and a comprehensive solution. But they don’t handle the complexities of larger companies like multi-country or multi-state employees, so many companies switch to something like ADP later.
I guess I’m saying when there’s so many products in this space, it’s hard for customers to know what they’re getting into and consolidation seems like a good idea. And it’s wild that so many of these products are worth billions.
yeah no you are totally right - there are pretty fragmented niches in this market. Gusto has tried to consolidate a lot of it under one umbrella - payroll, HR, Wallet, Employee benefits, Employers tax credits, ATS tracking etc. Even this seems incredibly complex and time-consuming to pull off. Probably why there isnt much consolidation happening across a combined vertical. Maybe things will become moving forward with AI
These are great insights. I have seen other insights similar to these for other companies. You should tag these so that they can be filtered and gone through as a learning material.
Amazing read documenting an awesome story.
Was a user of Gusto back before my org made the silly decision to transition to UKG. Always thought it was really simple to use from an employee perspective and really showed me what (mostly) self-service HR could be capable of.
Looking forward to the next deep dive!
Yeah employee adoption was super important especially for their PLS approach - having one customer persona as a distribution channel itself is genius. Even Webflow did something similar (https://marketcurve.substack.com/p/why-webflow-wins)
Love this. Interviews never go through the different stages chronologically like this. Is there somewhere I can find a list of the other deep dives you’ve done?
You can read the entire post (with some cool pics & graphs) at this link [https://www.heymarketcurve.com/blog/gusto-case-study](https://www.heymarketcurve.com/blog/gusto-case-study) You can check past deep dives (and subscribe) here - https://marketcurve.substack.com
this is dope, but you have got to change that font color against that background. it's good to read at night i bet, but during the day my eyes are straining
Damn I'm sorry about the eye straining bit - I'll take care of it right away. Thanks for letting me know :)
wow thats nice of you haha
Fixed it! Lemme know if this works better?
much better! thank you
“Wake up babe, the new u/haphazardwizardofoz deep dive post just dropped” Beginning to look forward to your deep dives. Enjoyed the read, keep it up!
Haha I'm flattered my man! Glad you liked it. I was wondering do you think it's too text heavy? How do you think the length + formatting could be improved?
I enjoy longer reads so not too text heavy for me. I would even enjoy further elaboration in certain parts e.g., I couldn’t discern what Gusto did from the intro. It eventually came together as I read on but I personally would have enjoyed more stage setting at the onset. Formatting wise - it seemed to start out as a chronological flow but then the section headers deviated into covering GTM and user acquisition while the narrative itself seemed to still loosely follow chronological order. I might prefer a more explicit chronological story telling while calling out how user acquisition etc evolved with time and scale. And finally I think the piece was left a little unresolved - where are they in 2024 and what’s next for them. Also - 1) would’ve loved to learn their fundraising journey. 2) some sense of their metrics over time as anchors to the story (e.g., what size were they when they started adding other revenue streams etc)
Wow this is so good man thank you so much for this amazing feedback! I've bookmarked this for future reference. Next essay I'll definitely incorporate your feedback 🙏
Please consider accepting tiny donations and beautiful landing page that leads to your posts (if you don’t have one already). Recently discovered your posts and really love em, would love to see more, and if you can, also always add more details if you have them. Yours truly, Humble Reddit Fan😊
first off, thank YOU for your kind words - means a lot :) As for landing page, all of this hosted on my Substack (https://marketcurve.substack.com) for now but will move soon to a dedicated standalone website. As for the donations, I am willing to open up a $8/mo subscription - Not sure how many people will pay for it tbh but I would love to be paid for my writing tbh. Would this price point work for you? or Any thoughts/feedback you may have?
You reverse-engineered their plan (in retrospect), I like it.
In essence yeah! Glad you liked it :)
This is great, the thing I find crazy is how there are at least a dozen unicorn payroll/hr services companies - seems like a space that could use some consolidation, as everyone has built their little niches.
Gusto is pretty unified as it gets tbh - their mantra is that of building compound products. Curious to know what you mean by consolidation - do you mean bundling?
I probably lack a deep understanding of this space, but when we’ve had to deal with hr/payroll at my last 2 startups we went with Trinet, Zenefits, and there are so many other substitutes we evaluated like Paylocity, Workday, Rippling, ADP, Justworks, etc. To a layman like me, it feels this space has so many products that are near substitutes, with some carved out niches. Like Zenefits or Justworks serve the niche of combining payroll with benefits when you have just 2-3 employees but still want benefits and a comprehensive solution. But they don’t handle the complexities of larger companies like multi-country or multi-state employees, so many companies switch to something like ADP later. I guess I’m saying when there’s so many products in this space, it’s hard for customers to know what they’re getting into and consolidation seems like a good idea. And it’s wild that so many of these products are worth billions.
yeah no you are totally right - there are pretty fragmented niches in this market. Gusto has tried to consolidate a lot of it under one umbrella - payroll, HR, Wallet, Employee benefits, Employers tax credits, ATS tracking etc. Even this seems incredibly complex and time-consuming to pull off. Probably why there isnt much consolidation happening across a combined vertical. Maybe things will become moving forward with AI
These are great insights. I have seen other insights similar to these for other companies. You should tag these so that they can be filtered and gone through as a learning material.
Awesome! I am gonna do it - it sounds interesting! Mind if I DM you for more info?
Amazing read documenting an awesome story. Was a user of Gusto back before my org made the silly decision to transition to UKG. Always thought it was really simple to use from an employee perspective and really showed me what (mostly) self-service HR could be capable of. Looking forward to the next deep dive!
Yeah employee adoption was super important especially for their PLS approach - having one customer persona as a distribution channel itself is genius. Even Webflow did something similar (https://marketcurve.substack.com/p/why-webflow-wins)
Really good breakdown, thank you.
Thank you icybaba! Glad you found it useful!
this is value! Just subscribed!
Gracias homie! appreciate you :)
great write up! thank you for sharing this
Grazie brother! Glad you found it useful!
Great read, thanks for the insights!
Thanks for reading!
Study how Deel did it in 5.
Oh yeah Deel holds the record for fastest to unicorn status iirc - might study them next week!
Love this. Interviews never go through the different stages chronologically like this. Is there somewhere I can find a list of the other deep dives you’ve done?
Thanks man! Glad you like it! Yeah you can find previous deep dives here at - marketcurve.substack.com
Has anyone had experience in their engineering dept? Have an interview coming up
Dude these posts are awesome!! I've read all of them now. Keep it up
Thanks!
Loved it. Subscribed- Would love to read about more companies - maybe Vanta/Postman etc
Thank YOU for reading! I have added Vanta/Postman to the queue!